STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - So who was really on stage on Tuesday night anyway?

It may have been a mayoral debate between Democrat Bill de Blasio and Republican Joe Lhota, but two names mentioned frequently during the hour-long encounter belonged to mayors from years past: David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani.

And that's key for Staten Island.

Lhota was a deputy mayor under Giuliani, the Republican that Island votes put in City Hall in 1993.

De Blasio worked in the administration of Dinkins, the Democrat whom Islanders identify with everything that was wrong with the city before.

So you'd see why the name-checking would prick up the ears of Islanders, placing the borough squarely in the middle of the debate, which came with two weeks to go until Election Day.

Lhota fired first, pointing out the Dinkins/de Blasio connection, and saying that the Dinkins era was one that saw 2,000 murders a year and a race riot.

"He is actually taking us backward," Lhota said of what the city would look like under de Blasio.

De Blasio fired back that Lhota was fear-mongering, particularly with his campaign ad about the biker gang that attacked an SUV driver in Manhattan.

Lashing into Lhota, he called him the "right-hand man" to Giuliani when Giuliani "was going out of his way to divide this city."

Easy to see why Lhota would bring up Dinkins: The Republican desperately needs the Island to win, and there are few pols as unpopular in the red borough as the city's first African-American mayor. Lhota is also playing to other conservative pockets of the city he has to have in order to overcome de Blasio's titanic lead in the polls.

The "back to the bad old days" bell was one that Lhota and Conservative Borough President James Molinaro rang during Lhota's recent fundraiser here.

With that argument, is it any coincidence that SILive.com voters responding to an online poll overwhelmingly said that Lhota had won Tuesday's debate?

As for de Blasio, it doesn't hurt for him to raise the specter of Giuliani, still a polarizing figure across the city and one that many believe set race relations back in the city.